Amaretto Sour

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What Is an Amaretto Sour?

The Amaretto Sour is the rare cocktail with two distinct identities: a saccharine, one-note 1970s relic in its original form, and a genuinely respected modern classic in its 2010s reinvention. The modern version combines amaretto, cask-strength bourbon, fresh lemon juice, rich simple syrup, and egg white into a silky, nutty, well-balanced sour — a dramatic upgrade from its disco-era predecessor. It shares its dry-shake, egg-white technique with the site's Whisky Sour and Boston Sour, but its amaretto base gives it a flavor unlike either.

The History Behind the Amaretto Sour

Amaretto itself traces back to 16th-century Saronno, in Italy's Lombardy region, where legend credits its invention to a young widow who modeled for the Virgin Mary in a church fresco and steeped apricot kernels in brandy as a gift for the painter — inadvertently creating the liqueur that would eventually become Disaronno, still made from an unchanged recipe dating to 1525. The Amaretto Sour cocktail itself is far more recent: Disaronno introduced the drink as part of a marketing campaign in 1974, built as a simple two-parts-amaretto-to-one-part-lemon-juice sour designed to move product rather than showcase technique. It caught on through the 1970s alongside a broader wave of sweet Italian liqueur cocktails, but the disco era's excesses did the drink no favors, and by the 1980s it had been relegated to the same dustbin as most other cloyingly sweet cocktails of its time — remembered, when remembered at all, as nearly undrinkably sugary. Its redemption came around 2012, when Portland, Oregon, bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler, working at the bar Clyde Common, rebuilt the drink almost from scratch. Morgenthaler's key insight was adding a generous pour of cask-strength bourbon to balance amaretto's sweetness, along with rich simple syrup and a dry-shaken egg white for texture, transforming a punchline into one of the most respected modern sours on serious cocktail menus, a turnaround chronicled in Wikipedia's profile of Jeffrey Morgenthaler.

What Does an Amaretto Sour Taste Like?

Amaretto brings sweet, nutty almond and marzipan flavor with a subtle apricot undertone — Disaronno's actual base is apricot kernel oil rather than almonds, despite the almond-forward flavor profile, a detail explained by Main Street Liquor's guide to Disaronno Amaretto. Cask-strength bourbon adds real spirit weight and warmth that the original 1970s recipe entirely lacked, keeping the drink from tipping into pure dessert territory. Fresh lemon juice supplies the acidity needed to cut through amaretto's natural sweetness, and rich simple syrup rounds out the body without adding excess sugar on top of what the amaretto already provides. Egg white, dry-shaken before ice is added, creates a thick, silky foam that gives the whole drink a luxurious texture. The overall balance is nutty, warm, tart, and substantial — a completely different drinking experience from the thin, syrupy original.

How to Make a Modern Amaretto Sour

Combine 1.5 oz amaretto, 0.75 oz cask-strength bourbon, 0.75 oz fresh lemon juice, 0.5 oz rich simple syrup (2:1 sugar to water), and 1 egg white in a shaker without ice. Shake vigorously for 15-20 seconds to properly emulsify the egg white, then add ice and shake again until well chilled. Strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice, or up into a coupe. No garnish is strictly required, though a few drops of Angostura bitters on the foam are a common finishing touch, echoing the presentation used in the site's New York Sour.

Popular Variations

Bartenders have continued tweaking Morgenthaler's formula since its introduction. Some versions swap bourbon for rye whiskey, adding more spice to counter amaretto's sweetness. Others adjust the bourbon-to-amaretto ratio depending on how boozy or how sweet the drinker prefers the final result, similar to how the site's own Vodka Sour can be adjusted between tart and sweet to taste. For drinkers drawn to the honey-and-citrus balance of a well-built sour but without amaretto's nutty sweetness, the site's Gold Rush and Bee's Knees both apply a similar dry-shake, egg-white-adjacent sensibility to a different spirit-and-sweetener combination.

Glassware, Garnish, and When to Serve It

A rocks glass over fresh ice is the most common modern serve, though a coupe works equally well for a more formal presentation. A few drops of Angostura bitters on the foam is the signature finishing touch many bartenders have adopted. It's a versatile drink, equally at home as an after-dinner sipper or a cocktail-hour order, appealing to the same crowd that appreciates other well-executed whiskey sours covered in the site's guide to the best bourbon cocktails for whiskey lovers.

Why the Amaretto Sour's Reinvention Matters

Few cocktails have undergone as dramatic a reputational turnaround as the Amaretto Sour, and its story has become something of a parable in bartending circles: a genuinely bad, overly sweet drink can be completely rehabilitated with the right structural changes rather than being abandoned outright. Jeffrey Morgenthaler's addition of bourbon and egg white didn't just improve the recipe — it proved that even the most dismissed cocktails from cocktail history's lower moments can be worth revisiting with a critical eye. More than a decade later, the modern Amaretto Sour remains a fixture on serious cocktail menus, standing as proof that reinvention, not nostalgia alone, is often what keeps a classic alive.